How To: Use the Samsung Galaxy S III’s S Beam and WiFi direct to transfer files

It’s amazing how many new features each generation of smartphones receives. From GPS, to front-facing cameras, and now innovative new connectivity methods such as NFC and WiFi direct, it never ceases to amaze me how engineers keep cramming in all of this great stuff! Now that it’s in our phones, it’s up to us to use it!

You may have seen the Galaxy S III demonstrating its S Beam capabilities in their commercials, but are you curious how to actually go about emulating the results?

It looks pretty simple in the commercial–just tap and send right? Well there is a little prep work required for this process.

1. Go to Manu > Settings > More settings [Wireless and network]

2. Now we have to turn on S Beam and WiFi Direct. Make sure to tick the NFC box, switch on WiFi direct and then select S Beam and toggle that on as well. Now we are ready to get beamin’!

4. After you separate your phones, the content transfer will be completed over WiFi direct, and you will successfully have sent your image–just like in the commercials!

Now keep in mind your phone will prompt you to turn off WiFi direct after 5 minutes of activity (it is a sort of hotspot so it can drain battery life), so you can’t always send content with merely one touch. But this is a nice way to easily and most importantly, wirelessly, swap content between two Galaxy S IIIs.

Why go thru the trouble turning on Sbeam and NFC and wifi direct and tapping phones when all you have to do is pull down your notification bar, turn on wifi direct and just send the files to another phone without tapping them together? I can send two complete movies to another phone using just wifi direct in about 10 seconds! Wifi direct is empressively fast!